The House that Jane Built

Image: © Fernweh Taken: 29 Aug 2017

Bookbench #2 by Jane Callan. Outside the Civic Offices, Basingstoke. This bench gives viewers a peek into a Regency dollhouse that seems to double as a figurative house from one of Austen’s novels. The scene’s two middle panels depict two sisters alone in a bedroom in which the 1870 likeness of Jane Austen hangs, a young woman playing a piano, and a man courting a young woman. One gets the sense of the Bennet and Dashwood sisters in looking at this bench, as well as the class divide in an elite Regency home, as indicated by the final two panels’ illustrations of servants’ spaces. A trail of 24 similar benches was laid out in and around Basingstoke to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death.

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